I am just looking to extend the fps and life of my computer for a year or two until the current gen of RTX cards has been passed.
Saw this 1080ti mini for an acceptable price.
What I can gather about it, it has full 1080ti capability in a small frame. Downsides are cooling is not as good as good as full size card, so long load times may cause overclock throttling due to temp.
I am running an old but faithful amd 7990 card which runs all my games fine in 1080p but dcs is starting to struggle now. A 1080ti will mean my cpu will definitely bottle neck on an older and slower i7
My aim is to probably upgrade the monitor to 1440p next year, no interest in VR and Ray tracing at the moment and looking to have playable frame rates with high to excellent visuals.
So is the card listed above (which has decent reviews, despite its flaws) going to be in the realms of what I am looking for or should I, for an extra price of about £150+ go for a full size 1080ti like this.?
As long as it does not skimp on the amount of VRAM (video memory) and clock speeds compared to a full-size offering you should be fine. This thing will happily drive VR for ya as well. Do it. Do it. Do it!
As per the first post, the mini is a full 1080ti, it has faster clock speeds than reference cards and everything you would expect from a 1080ti. As per the reviews I have seen all are impressed with how zotac achieved this.
I totally understand the compromise that the smaller card has less thermal efficiency and some reports state that you may incur an overclock degrade if the card gets hot (thermal throttling)., the question is, will that be a problem for me.
I am not looking to squeeze every ounce of performance out of the card nor push beyond factory settings. Just looking for a cheapish alternative for a 12 to 24 month extension on the current rig.
So the question is, for the price of £150 pounds less than a full size card of same spec is it worth going mini (and slightly less performance taking thermal throttling into account) or go full. An open question of course.
I have experience with terrible thermal throttling on an R9 290 reference model. After a few minutes of playing, my framerate would halve. Granted, those were probably the hottest running cards of the last 10 years, if not ever.
I’d guess this 1080Ti is better equipped to deal with the (probably lower) amount of heat it generates.
How many people are reporting thermal throttling? How many have no thermal throttling? How bad is the thermal throttling?
Try to see if you can find a performance over time graph where you see the throttling kick in.
A lot probably depends on the conditions. Do you have a case that has good airflow? Much space in the interior? Is the front of the tower ‘open’ with a filter or is there a solid front with only small inlets on the side?
These are the kinds of questions I would try to get answered. It is hard to give a general answer on mini vs full size, as a lot depends on the specific model and its heat generation and cooling properties, and the conditions in which it runs. I may look into some of those questions myself later, but am pretty busy this week. (Yes I should not be looking at Mudspike if I am busy, I know)
Ah well, nevermind guys. Went to work, and really thought about getting it. Get home and it’s already out of stock. I guess the price was a bit of a bargain after all.
I’ve lost count on the number of decent deals I’ve missed out on because I waited too long.
On the other hand, I’ve lost count of the number of decent deals I’ve missed out on because I bought something shortly before it went on (a better) sale.
